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Sunday, May 6, 2012

Ahhhh! End of the Year Chaos!

Wow! It has been a couple of weeks since I have posted! We were sorting out a family emergency and it has sure been a whirlwind couple of weeks. It is a crazy time of year. As the year is winding down, i am always overwhelmed by the amount of paperwork and meetings and other things that come up at the end of a school year. I have decided that I am going to spend the next couple of posts talking about technology that helps me try to stay on top of all this craziness! I am by no means an expert and I would also love to hear from others about what they use to help manage their chaos. :)

This week I want to talk about Evernote. I just started using this program a couple months ago and I absolutely LOVE it. I have it downloaded on my home computer, my android phone, and on my school computer (YES.... it wasn't blocked by our filter!) With evernote, I am able to create all sorts of notes and categorize them. For example... I have created folders for each subject at school. I also have created tags for each student. Let's say that Joey has done poorly on an addition math recording sheet in math stations. He was supposed to use manipulatives to act out a subtraction problem then he was supposed to draw a picture of his manipulatives and record the subtraction number sentence that describes picture. Instead, Joey recorded an addition number sentence rather than subtraction. Clearly Joey needs some small group or one on one reteaching. In the past, I would have either kept his recording sheet OR I would have to run to the copy machine, make a copy, send the original home, blah,blah, blah... Not now! with evernote, I take out my phone, snap a picture of the recording sheet, create a note, tag it with Joey's name and file it in the math folder. Now I can search on any device that I have evernote on and my note with pictures and annotations will be available. I can also add the reteaching evidence to the note when I am finished! Super easy and convenient for paper phobic people like me! I have used evernote to bring evidence to ARDs, planning meetings, and to make to do lists! I absolutely love it and I hope to become more and more paperless.